Larry Burrows
Larry Burrows (born May 29, 1926 in London - died February 10, 1971 in Laos) was an English photographer best known for his pictures of the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Burrows was born in London in 1926. He left school at age 16 and took a job in Life magazine's London bureau, where he printed photographs. Some accounts blame Burrows for melting photographer Robert Capa's D-Day pictures in the drying cabinet[1], but in fact it was another technician, according to John G. Morris.[2]
Burrows went on to become a photographer and covered the war in Vietnam from 1962 until his death in 1971. Burrows died with fellow photojournalists Henri Huet, Kent Potter and Keisaburo Shimamoto, when their helicopter was shot down over Laos. In 2002, Burrows' posthumous book Vietnam was awarded the Prix Nadar award. At the time of the helicopter crash, the photographers were covering Operation Lam Son 719, a massive armored invasion of Laos by South Vietnamese forces.
On April 03-04, 2008, the scant remains of Burrows and fellow photographers Heut, Potter and Shimamoto, were honored and interened at the Newseum in Washington D.C.
On April 03, 2008, a ceremony was held at the Newseum in Washington D.C. to mark the interment of the remains of Burrows, Huet, Potter and Shimamoto, along with seven South Vietnames also killed in the Feb 10, 1071 shootdown by a North Vietnamese 37mm anti-aircraft gun defending the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Speakers included Richard Pyle, Saigon bureau chief of The Associated Press in Saigon at the time of the crash, and Horst Faas, former AP Saigon photo chief, who were co-authors of ``Lost Over Laos: A True Story of Tragedy, Mystery and Friendship, published by Da Capo Press in 2003 and re-released in paperback in 2004. The book recounts the story of how Pyle helped the Hawaii-based Pentagon unit responsible for MIA searches in Indochina and elsewhere, locate the long-lost Laos crash site in 1996. Pyle and Faas were present when the organization, the US Joint Task Force Full Accounting (JTFFA), excavated the site in March 1998. In late 2002, the search unit, renamed the POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), declared the case closed on grounds of ``circumstantial group identification. After bureaucratic complications blocked efforts to bury the group remains on official ground, the Newseum agreed to accept them and arranged in 2006 for their acquisition from JPAC. The ceremony on April 3 2008, which preceded the Newseum's own official opening by a week, was attended by more than 100 guests including relatives of Burrows, Huet and Potter, and many former Vietnam war colleagues. Speakers in addition to Pyle and Faas included Newseum president Peter Pritchard and AP president Tom Curley, and Burrows' son Russell spoke for the families.
References
- ^ Flying Short Course: Evolving Newspapers Pushing Photojournalists For Video
- ^ Morris blames it on a young developer named Dennis Banks. John G. Morris, "Get the picture, A personal history of photojournalism", Random House Inc, N-Y 1998
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